Tell Santa to bring more assault rifles

America tools up for the inauguration

"With foreclosed homes becoming drug dens or homes for the homeless, we've heard that real estate agents are looking into packing heat," wrote someone for the Merced Star of California.

"With the bad economy, [one owner] worries about losing the right to hunt and 'being able to feed [his] family,'" stated the Bee.

Barbarians at the gate

"I am afraid of what may happen if people get desperate or we are attacked again in the midst of joblessness," said a man to the Snohomish newspaper. "I think some people won't be ready and will resort to desperate measures," echoing a not uncommon belief that when anarchy takes hold and the cities empty, one will have to defend one's family from liberals, barbarians and people who aren't white.

Throughout the guns and ammo surge stories, however, gun dealers and firearms aficionados make the point that owners of legally bought guns are law-abiding citizens (well, mostly) of the highest sort. One takes them at their word.

"People are buying guns because they have seen too many constitutionally guaranteed rights taken away, as with wiretapping phones under the premise of searching for terrorists," wrote a reader of the Allentown Morning Call. It the US, it is the people's duty to throw off usurpers, so "Let's hope people are buying lots of ammunition too!"

Socialist radical laws may be enacted in Washington, writes one man to the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia. Economic turmoil will continue and in such times "[those] people who are on the line of honesty and decency will turn to crime to supplement their income."

Not a particularly charitable thought as the holidays near. ®

George Smith is a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org, a defense affairs think tank and public information group. At Dick Destiny, he blogs his way through chemical, biological, and nuclear terror hysteria, often by way of the contents of neighbourhood hardware stores.